Fallout 3 remake mod Capital Wasteland uncancelled

Having halted development in 2018 due to legal concerns, the team behind Capital Wasteland have resumed work on remaking Fallout 3 inside Fallout 4 as a mod – with a wild plan to sidestep the legal issue. Having previously intended to edit Fallout 3’s sound files to work with Fallout 4, which was a no-no, they now plan to record the 45,000 lines of the game’s script with new voices themselves. It’s a huge undertaking to remake a game inside a marginally fancier shell but hey, puzzling personal passions are the heart of modding.

“Back in March of last year we communicated with Bethesda regarding our planned method to implement the voice acting and other audio from Fallout 3 into the Capital Wasteland,” Capital Wasteland co-lead developer “HcGxGrill” explained in Wednesday’s announcement. “As you might already be aware, we were informed that our planned approach would raise some serious red flags and so after a few discussions amongst our team we decided it would be best to put the project on hold.”

Strange desires can be suppressed, but eventually they’ll bubble back up.

“For myself after working for hundreds of hours on this project and then having to stop really made me depressed. Something I had an extreme passion for was suddenly not there anymore,” HcGxGrill continued. “So after taking a few months break, I slowly picked up the pieces and continued my work on the Capital Wasteland.”

Several members of the Road To Liberty team have also resumed work. They now face more work then ever.

To get around Bethesda’s unhappiness about the team reusing–and, crucially, redistributing–Fallout 3’s sound, they’re recording the script themselves. All of it. All 45,000-odd lines. From all those characters. Sure, half the characters in Bethesda’s RPGs share the same voice but that’s still a whole lot of words.

Unsurprisingly, the team now find themselves wanting voice actors as well as other developers. See their recruitment page if you have the skills or trills and fancy chipping in.

Some small and anxious part of me worries that Bethesda might now come up with a new reason to shut down the mod.